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Comments 54601 to 54650:

  1. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Some of these comments are ingenuous in a Quixotic way that's almost charming even as they surely must be extraordinarily irritating to others sharing the same space. A comment quoted by John Cook rattles off a list of idiosyncratic scientists, including: Nils-Axel Mörner, retired head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University, former Chairman of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution (1999–2003), and author of books supporting the validity of dowsing... I wonder how Prof. Lindzen feels about being lumped in with dowsers?
  2. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    JohnMashey@18: Just slightly OT, but I hope the point is allowed to be made; I spent more than half my life as a professional auto mechanic, specializing in nifty little LBCs (Little British Cars), and of those, E type Jaguars were high on the list. Most that I worked on were owned by engineers, and they provided me a decent living, by attempting to *fix* the cars themselves, especiually the "simple SU carburettors. I cannot tell you the times I was told, "Oh, *I'm* a _____________ (anything BUT related to cars) engineer, so these "simple" carbs can't be that hard to adjust." Whereupon I charged them $50 to reset them, so that the car would run. *Again.* Like it had, the last time before they'd monkeyed with the SUs. None learned. I made money...;) Back OnT, I see the same thing with all the denialati, and because of my previous experience, recognized it right off the bat. Thanks to you, and others, who've put a finer point on the whole topic for me, as a geologist, who definitely is NOT an expert in climatology, but who certainly has a decent understanding of how to operate the game called Planet Earth, it is really valuable to read these opinions and dissections of positions similar to Eric T.S. Sowwy, gws@23....{:=P
  3. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    actually, I just read through the last fall argument of yours you had linked to (Dessler vs. Spencer), and it is obvious that you moved the goalpost within the discussion until you finally stayed away I will have to go offline again soon, so no time to read teh linked pages answers: - I am a scientist also have also taught about denialism - I am not a skeptic - I have observed Lindzen particularly, and found that his demeanor is very reassuring, but that he uses denialist tactics (to spread doubt) in his talks when you look carefully
  4. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    gws, regarding your fourth dash above, you could answer the equivalent of the questions you asked me in #10. Although CS seems to be the focus here, I should also point out arguments about attribution here and the WashPost weather blog I've also argued about accounting. But the most scientifically narrow (and therefore potentially resolvable) argument is CS. But it's not a new goalpost, nor one that has been moved around a lot.
  5. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    Hi John, Mark, My straw poll of scientists was referring to area rather than volume. Mainly because volume is not well observed. Ed.
  6. Bostjan Kovacec at 01:29 AM on 8 September 2012
    Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
    Here’s my calculation: Let’s take a FarmVille type of agricultural opperation 22 ha of arable land with 3 yokes of oxen Feed for 6 oxen: 40 kg/day x 365 days x 6= 87.6 t 1 ha of Lolium multiflorum Lam. var. westerwoldicum or Lolium multiflorum Lam. var. italicum or Lolium perenne Lam will give give 45-55 tons of green fodder with 25% dry mater a year (60 to 80 t in a good year). It should feed 3 animals. Set aside 2 ha to feed the oxen. In Roman times an area 1 yoke of oxen could plow a day was 1 jugerum = 2530m2 = 0.25 ha 3 yokes of oxen can do 0.75 ha/day 20 ha / 0.75 ha/day = 26.66 days 2 crop cycles a year require 53.33 day of work of 6 oxen and 4-5 people Add 2 rounds a year for other cultivation and harvest = 53.33 days Oxen would work about 4 months a year and rest 8 months. 20 ha totals 107 days of 4-5 people = 1.3-1.6 manyears => 2 manyears (to be human and give them some time to relax) Compare to tractors and harvesters: 20 ha of corn = 440 hours = 2 months of work of one person 2 ha to fuel the oxen is less than 9% of arable land of the farm. With better plows and higher productivity this number could be as low as 6%. The technology has been tested over extensive period and is readily available. I used Roman times plowing technology and productivity estimates, so I consider my calculation to be conservative. If there are no mistakes than this calculation proves that it is possible to cut fossil fuel emissions from agricultural tractors by 100% using working animals. Horses or other animals could be included in the mix if they are more suitable for work. Keeping 6 big animals on 22 ha doesn’t do any harm to the environment. Additional man power needed represents a huge opportunity to employ people in really green jobs.
  7. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    this is unfair, people have taken over my thread with Eric just because I was offline for a while ... ;-) anyway, just a few more comments: - there are many people like Eric I think; I have argued on forums with at least one more - the basic idea is to hang on to something that gives hope, or that allows continued denial, depending on your ideology; it does not necessarily make you an active denier - you are better at this if you are smart/educated - we all, scientists included, suffer every once form this until we allow ourselves to step back a moment and analyze our own behavior for confirmation bias - if you keep doing it, it does belong to the "five ways" and is known as "moving the goalpost", another favorite denialist tactic. the latest goalpost move in fashion is the "it's not so bad because CS is low argument" - Lindzen and others have focused on low CS as 'the last holdout' as they cannot credibly argue anything else any more, but the weight of the evidence is closing on them as one can find out by surfing SkS on a CS quest, or by being a climate science nerd
  8. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Sphaerica, Your last 4 points have some validity, particularly #2 and of course #3 :) On #1 (and therefore #4) I have to disagree. I've gone into that before here As for paleo evidence supporting the models, that requires models, see my response to Bernard here JohnMashey, your point is valid. I do know about weather models although I am nowhere near an expert. I know somewhat how the weather must be parameterized in coarser climate models, but not the details.
  9. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Geoff: Would someone like to ask Stephan whether he can identify the source blogs for individual respondents? Perhaps, if you're lucky. As you've burned your bridges by spewing inane questions about chronology at Lewandowsky guaranteed to eliminate any chance he'll take you seriously, it seems you'll now have to depend on charity. Treat it as an object lesson.
  10. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    The psychology of science denial is pretty fascinating. It's interesting how entirely predictable they are, and how they simply can't help themselves even when their behavior is predicted right to their faces. Just goes to show that there's no sense in arguing with a science denier, because his behavior is not going to change.
  11. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Kevin C: "It is all focussed on the way people respond as individuals, which is inevitable since it is being studied using the tools of psychology." Psychology is not limited to a focus on individuals. "The tools of psychology" are regularly applied to group dynamics.
  12. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    'gws, no, I'm an engineer. But I understand modeling, I perform statistical analysis and am familiar with the science of weather.' See this discussion. Some technically-trained people over-generalize from the sorts of models they know about into thinking they necessarily understand other kinds. I examined some examples of the *different* ways in which different disciplines tend to over-generalize, if they do. Classical skeptics who do this, when given the right examples, change their minds. One of the examples was of a research chemist, and it turned out his skepticism came from problems with protein folding, although that took a while to figure out, as I'd guess rather few people have any serious exposure to that and climate models. In the extreme skeptic case, this can be "I do Java, therefore I know about climate software :-)"
  13. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    11, 13, Eric, And yet there is a response to you in the very comment thread to which you linked (at RC, 2006).
    Eric, your obsession with resolution is not reflected in reality and seems to be tunnelvision. Worse yet is that it appears to strengthen your skepticsm without foundation. Look at the model results. They speak for themselves. Models of all types (not just climate) do not inevitably improve with continually greater resolution. In fact, it has been shown that there are limits to the benefits of higher resolution. Weather and air quality models clearly show that there is a benefit limit. Air quality model’s performance does not necessarily improve and can degrade significantly when finer resolution is applied. Futhermore, it has been shown in certain applications that a single parameter can more than adequately represent long term trends or patterns depending on the significance. Climate is long term; weather is short term. It is pretty basic.
    I point this out because your form of denial does not entirely demonstrate any of John's tendencies: Cherry-picking, Conspiracy Theories, Magnifying Dissenters and Non-experts, and Logical Fallacies. I say "not entirely" because in fact, as the appended comment demonstrates: 1) You do cherry-pick, by ignoring the evidence that your position on resolution is wrong. 2) You do magnify dissenters, by elevating your own opinion of models and dismissing the actual experts. [Please show qualified citations that support your position that the models are totally inadequate for forecasting climate sensitivity.] 3) No conspiracy theories. Good. 4) Logical fallacies. Well, your entire position is IMO a double non-sequitur, equivalent to "Climate models do not model weather well, therefore all estimates of climate sensitivity are invalid" and "all estimates of climate sensitivity are invalid, therefore we need to ignore all other evidence and wait until the models get better."
  14. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    It is a great article John - and it is like a denialist honey trap - they came in droves and provided a real life demonstration of exactly what you described as the "How". It's notable that they also studiously avoided entering into any serious discussion that provided multiple lines of evidence - instead indulging in the usual gish gallop. Worth analysing when it's done and writing up in a journal almost I reckon :)
  15. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Eric brings up an interesting point, although his class of skeptic is by my observation exceedingly rare. Is this because there are few of them, or simply that they tend to be quiet in comparison to the loud, obnoxious, and downright boisterous "true deniers"? I don't know, but that fact that we "sense" so few of them is probably why they are not included in John's analysis. I would define his class of skeptic as "focused deniers." They can't bring themselves to be so silly as to refute all of the science, especially when so much of it is so obvious. What they do instead is to cherry-pick one foothold (low climate sensitivity, or only partial attribution to CO2, or the slow rate of warming and "we don't entirely know," or "let's wait a while and see how it plays out, just to be safe," or "the cure is worse than the disease," or whatever). They then cling tenaciously to that, despite the mounds of evidence against their particular position. They feel bolstered in maintaining that position, though, because they can be so reasonable about everything else. The GHG effect is real, there is warming detected, etc., etc.... but... In Eric's case, his entire position is based on suspicion of the quality of climate models, even though there are multiple studies of paleoclimate, observations, and other factors that agree completely with the estimate of a climate sensitivity between 2.0 and 4.5 C. He maintains his position even though some feedbacks (albedo, methane) are unfolding right before his very eyes as we speak (look north). Then there's basic risk aversion... the idea that if there's even a fraction of a chance that the models are right, the intelligent course is to take action... but no, no, lets wait two whole decades to see if the models can get better. After that there's the obvious... the fact that even 0.6 to 0.8 C of warming seems to be pretty darn bad right now (given two monster heat waves, multiple monster droughts, increasing storms, etc., etc.). But no, we can't be sure that's just a spate of natural events, because we don't yet trust the models. There are so many ways to look at this, to say "yes, well, I doubt the models, but the evidence is so strong otherwise"... but Eric's form of focused denial gets to have the best of both worlds. Agree with most of the evidence. Agree with the science. Laugh at the conspiracy theories. Laugh at the faux-skeptics. But cling tenaciously to one argument, blind to reason, and steadfastly claim to be a reasonable, true skeptic untainted by the symptoms of denial. A focused skeptic is not like "them." They're different. They're rational.
  16. Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
    For posterity's sake I should probably have said "...who think that the moon landings were hoaxed...".
  17. Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
    Vrooomie at #66. You're probably looking for the post: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/10/04/more-nonsense-about-co2/ Similar to it, and following on, was: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/03/22/remember-eg-becks-dodgy/comment-page-1/#comments They were truly days of denialist insanity. Most of the Beckophiles have now tempered their enthusiasm for his "camel-train of Bactrians marching up hill and down dale", but the occasional more extreme nutter still surfaces - they're probably the same ones who think that the moon landings were hoaxed...
  18. CRU tampered with temperature data
    karl: "I doubt that any of the arguments for adjustments would convince a poorly informed skeptic, who would always point back to the raw data as 'true'." Yes, and most "skeptics" are going to cling to the notion that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is based on surface temperature, and that if one can show that surface temp is not warming as much as projected, then AGW is falsified and the scientists are revealed as frauds.
  19. Bert from Eltham at 23:23 PM on 7 September 2012
    A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Erick I read Alice in Wonderland and dissected the untruths methodically before I turned ten. It was all a fabrication! How could a mere girl do all that without help from one of us boys? Could not even handle a rabbit or cat let alone a red queen! What part of fantasy do you inhabit. What is your next trick? Dissassemble quantum mechanics because it is beyond logic! Bert
  20. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Eli, as we often discuss here, there is no need for prediction, only modeling with fidelity for accurate projections. As increasing CO2 traps more heat the world will get warmer on average. How much positive feedback we get from increasing water vapor depends on how that water vapor is spread out (and really not much more than that). Weather spreads the water vapor out and concentrates it. Concentrated water vapor (e.g. concentrated convection) is essentially a negative feedback while less concentration implies greater positive feedback. For support for this, please read the thesis abstracts in my link in post #2 in the RC link above.

    Moderator Response: [Sph]. This is OT. Please take it to an appropriate thread.
  21. CRU tampered with temperature data
    sorry, that had to be: http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/daggegevens/antieke_wrn/
  22. CRU tampered with temperature data
    I doubt that any of the arguments for adjustments would convince a poorly informed skeptic, who would always point back to the raw data as "true". Isn't it possible to refer to other (european?) data sets who maybe don't suffer the same bias of morning/evening measurements? here's a beautiful data set from the netherlands, going back to the 18th century, showing a nice hockey stick: http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/daggegevens/antieke_wrn/zwanenburg_literatuur.html I don't know about any adjustments on these data, though.
  23. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Eric, since no one will ever be able to predict forcings accurately, you are not going to be able to EVER get global scale predictions much better than what we have today. It's the Arrhenius Dilemma
  24. Climate Deniers Are Giving Us Skeptics a Bad Name - Fred Singer
    Captain Pitheart@19: it's way late in this thread, and who knwos when anyone will see this but your link, http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/upload/2006/10/beckco2.png ...now is just a 404 error.
  25. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    gws, no, I'm an engineer. But I understand modeling, I perform statistical analysis and am familiar with the science of weather. My skepticism started with models and will end in a decade or two when models are able to model 100 years at 10 minute and 1 square mile resolution to capture convective precipitation processes. Here's some of my posts about it (scroll to comments): http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/the-missing-repertoire/ I can honestly say that I was not influenced unduly by Lindzen or others like him. When I started looking at this issue I read Al Gore's book and more material like it. I used my own knowledge to dissect Gore. I still like to read early Lindzen papers along with early Trenberth (they are very similar).
  26. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @Eric Ok, Thanks, yes I am aware of the argument, something like "there are serious scientists who accept GW but have shown that CS is low. They should not be called (GW) 'deniers'". My next questions for you then are - are you a scientist? or better: are you aware of teh scientific method and how (scientific) knowledge develops and evolves? - has your skepticism always hinged on (low) CS or has it evolved or developed over time? - have you observed people like Lindzen and other proponents of low CS give presentations? Thanks, gws
  27. Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
    You can't say the Sunday Times article was good if it included an interview with Christy, who is widely discredited, as you pointed out. This is just one more example of false balance, and it provides an escape valve for the public- as well as an excuse to do nothing.
  28. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    gws, that is one example, yes.
  29. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    I’m going to stand up for Lewandowsky here. Michael Sweet #127 and Bernard J #129 have a point. Sampling the opinions of human beings is not like like pulling different coloured balls out of a sack. There is no reason to believe that their beliefs should obey a Gaussian distribution, and no reason to reject a respondent simply because his responses are several standard deviations out on a limb. Imagine someone faced with this questionnaire announcing “I make a point of believing every conspiracy theory I come across”, and ticking the boxes accordingly. You may say he’s irrational, or that he’s an awkward cuss who’s going to screw up your carefully designed survey, but -too bad - if the population you’re sampling is humanity, you have to take the rough with the smooth. The point about the two outliers is not that they’re eccentric, but that they’re suspected of cheating. You could even argue that, since a certain proportion of humanity cheats systematically, a representative sample of humanity should keep them in. You could even argue that a warmist pretending to be a sceptic (or vice versa) has as much right to be heard as anyone else. What this shows, I think, is that the feebleness of Lewandowsky’s research lies not so much (or not only) in the weakness of the conclusions, which are sensitive to the removal of a couple of respondents, but that the conclusions are absolutely not generalisable to the world at large. We know practically nothing about the sample - whether they are representative of sceptics or believers at large, or even whether they are representative of readers of the blogs from which they were recruited. (Comments would suggest that they were not). The questions asked were so specific in time and space that the answers tell us nothing, even where numbers are large enough to provide a valid sample. What do I know or care about the Oklahoma bombing? Already I’m excluded from the sample. There is just so much wrong with this paper. We haven’t got to the bottom of it yet. Incidentally, I believe the two outliers Tom identified were close together in the numbered list on the spreadsheet, and that there was a cluster of conspiracy theorists at this point. This suggests that possibly they all came from the same blog. Would someone like to ask Stephan whether he can identify the source blogs for individual respondents?
  30. Bert from Eltham at 21:46 PM on 7 September 2012
    A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    It is worse thn you think John Cook! There are now conspiracy theories about research into conspiracy theories. here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/07/recursive_denail_fury/ Just check out the comments. wuwt would love to have them on board or do they already? Bert
  31. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @Eric Quick question: Is your argument that people who think CS is low are lumped in with the "real" deniers?
  32. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    gws, there are some examples on this forum. I tried to make that case on another thread although I would ask that you not bring the particulars of my argument over to this thread. If you disagree with what I say there, please do so there and I will respond there.
  33. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @Kevin, my two cents on ... "How are people responding socially?" 1.a they look for expert opinion --> fake experts and their enablers try at all expense to keep the evidence murky 1.b they look for consensus opinions as transported by the media --> failure by the (US) media leaves them in the cold 2. they look for leadership --> it is not provided for various reasons (e.g. short election cycles) suggest looking at the "Global Warmings Six Americas";it probably does not look hugely different in Europe
  34. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    I think there is a huge hole in the reasoning here. It is all focussed on the way people respond as individuals, which is inevitable since it is being studied using the tools of psychology. However, that completely ignores the other aspect of what is going on, which is how people are responding socially. And since the responses we are seeing are not the responses of people in isolated conditions but rather people who are interacting within and across social boundaries, psychology is inadequate to investigating those responses. You need social anthropology. I know only a smattering of social anthropology, and that primarily from single school. But from the little that I know, the response of both the skeptic and particularly the consensus communities to "the recent research linking climate denial to conspiracy ideation" is far more interesting than the research which spawned it. But no-one is talking about it. If I attempt a half-arsed attempt at an analysis I'll only D-K myself, but I don't see anyone else attempting it.
  35. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Eric, can you explain your point a bit better please ...
  36. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    John, while you made a lot of good points such as pointing out the use of cherry picking, I believe the 97% statistic is being used as a red herring. Briefly, a large majority of skeptics agree with the 97% of climate scientists on AGW. There are some very vocal exceptions, but their "alternative physics" is countered on almost every thread where it is brought up. The worst offenders have disappeared. We (skeptics) can do better, but it does not mean we haven't tried.
  37. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Well done John. I felt like I needed popcorn to read the comments to your article.
  38. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    Michael Sweet voices at #127 something that has been bugging me for days. What a priori evidence is there that indicates that any index of the psychology of conspiracy belief should follow a gaussian distribution? Much in psychology is non-gaussian, and indeed is multimodal (with highly discrete modes), and it's one reason why non-parametric statistics are often used in the discipline. Think about religious beliefs for a start. I'd certainly be interested in extreme responses in a survey, but I wouldn't be discarding them out-of-hand. Indeed, in a survey that I conducted for a government project the distribution of responses was bimodal, with the two modes at either ends of the response continuum. I suspect that in the survey that Michael alluded to, similar extremes would also exist, and that these would not imply that a majority view lies somewhere in between. Without much more in-depth dissection of the conspiracy phenomenon, I'd not be discarding any response out of hand, simply because it's 'extreme'. Beliefs frequently track in a very different way to something like body size...
  39. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    Reply to #120 Bob Loblaw at 09:05 AM on 7 September, 2012 How could Lewandowsky have known that the reply from McIntyre was "unlikely ever to arrive" I wonder?
  40. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    Tom, We disagree. Landowsky has used an agreed upon standard to delete 20% of his samples. He clearly is willing to delete samples if a reason exists. Outliers are not necessarily gamed, they may exist. The data may be bimodal. We do not know, that is why the data was collected. There is a standard in this research as to how to delete samples and I believe Landowsky has followed the standard. If the standard is to not delete without a reason the statistical analysis is irrelevant. I think we need an expert to tell us how these issues are handled. In the survey I worked on we only deleted samples that were contradictory (for example saying they had smoked 1 cigarette in one question and 100 in another question). Reviewing the data afterward, I realized that the nature of the questions made it very difficult to game since the participants did not know what we were interested in (we were interested in the urge to smoke in people who just started smoking). If you claimed you smoked a lot of cigarettes (the most obvious game)you were eliminated. Lewandowsky had a lot of questions he deleted from analysis. Perhaps these additional questions disguised the intent of the survey. Psychology surveys are more difficult to parse than temperature analysis. Humans are tricky animals. There is the possibility of gaming. On page 13 of the paper this is discussed. The two samples you do not like are not mentioned specifically in the paper. Lewandowsky claims the results relating to life satisfaction and conspiracy are similar to previous work, which suggests that the results are honest. Lewandowsky claims that belief in conspiracy theories in general is correlated with denial of AGW. Is this a surprise to readers who have visited WUWT? I find this conclusion easy to believe, even though the number of responders is low. I thought a poster on this forum regularly performed surveys. Can they come on here with expert advise?
  41. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    Sorry, @Mark, #23, I just got the tweet didn't question it. I'll tweet Ed Hawkins and see if he'll respond here. My own (lay) thought is that as multi-year ice has decreased, volume is more closely becoming a function of extent/area and therefore the distinction is becoming less important. Would that be right?
  42. Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
    Bostjan Kovacec at #70. Given that humans are estimated to co-opt around 40% of net primary productivity (NPP), with a range* of 20-55%, it should be apparent that there's little room to replace the current use of fossil-fueled machinery with additional horse-power, ox-power, donkey-power, buffalo-power, elephant-power, insert-alternative-beast-power. Those extra animals would be in addition to the current working stock, and even though they're grazers rather than carnivores they'd still need additional tapping of PP co-option for their fueling. This would place an extraordinary burden on the remaining portion of the biosphere's PP that's not currently co-opted, and quite frankly I think that the estimation of co-option of humanly-useful PP is in fact out-dated and thus under-estimated: by way of example, consider the parlous state of high trophic-level fisheries, compared with the total marine PP. It's difficult to give a simple, blanket estimation of how much PP would be required to replace fossil-fueled farming technology, but if you're willing to make your own assumptions about standards of living and about proportion of energy used for farming, and replaced, then you can start doing some calculations of your own using the numbers here: http://www.evworld.com/library/energy_numbers.pdf [*Some references: mahb.stanford.edu www.globalchange.umich.edu www.eoearth.org www.civilizationsfuture.com
    Moderator Response: [RH] hot linked urls that were breaking page format
  43. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    @John(16), were those scientists talking about ice extent, or volume?
  44. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    yocta @21 - thanks. Yes, that should be a fun post.
  45. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    Great post. Looking forward to the arctic predictions Vs Reality article, that one will really hold people to account.
  46. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    Bert from Eltham: I am constantly struck that so many people who are so passionately committed to the Free Market™ apparently cannot detect a clear long term trend in an unsurprisingly noisy graph. Perhaps this explains the GFC? ;-)
  47. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    Well, Ahab's already spoken for.
  48. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    doug_bostrom @124, that's a rather self destructive metaphor you've got going. You will forgive me, I hope, if I wish that you neither kill your Moby Dick, nor are killed by them. Besides, which, there was only one Moby Dick, and he was fictional.
  49. empirical_bayes at 10:30 AM on 7 September 2012
    Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt to Levels Unseen in Millennia
    That link to plankton report is here: http://www.whoi.edu/main/news-releases?cid=139069&tid=3622 I'm not suggesting I am in favor of such a geoengineering exercise, since there are many unknowns and conceivable lateral impacts on the ecosystem. Don't even know if the carbon remains sequestered. My point is that if CO2 is getting drawn, this might offer a calibration of how much in a natural setting such a bloom might offer in terms of effectiveness.
  50. Realistically What Might the Future Climate Look Like?
    Bostjan - "Does anyone have any idea how the emissions from animals compared with diesel?" Horses, being animals, are carbon neutral aside from the energy needed to produce their feed. Their major emissions problem is discussed in From Horse Power to Horsepower, namely... manure. In 1894 the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in New York city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure - they were just running out of places to put it, of uses to put it to. There simply was no use (not even fertilizer) for that much manure. And the quality of life for city horses (not to mention the difficulty of pulling dead horses from the streets) was rather too horrible to contemplate. The problem early in the 20th century was (for a while, at least) solved by fossil fueled vehicles, whose emission was gaseous and did not need shoveling. Of course, now we're paying the price for those emissions, and perhaps electric, biofuel, or other options are better choices for the future. The amount of horse manure deposited by sufficient horses to replace diesel powered vehicles for 7 billion people is more than staggering. And not just from an olfactory point of view.

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